CERIF: The Common European Research Information
Format Model
Brigitte
Jörg 1
1
e-mail: brigitte.joerg@dfki.de
Research is becoming more and more data intensive. With increased
computing power more data than ever are being and will be produced, stored and (re-)used.
Data are collected in databases, computed and annotated, or transformed by specific
tools, and documented in research publications, reports, presentations, or
other types of files. The management of research related data is difficult, and
even more complicated is their re-use, exchange and integration, often caused
by the lack of a standard representation format. Quality data management
including access and reliable data analysis across data sets requires formal representation
means and rich linkage facilities. We present the metadata model CERIF (i) to
handle research data for entities like Project, Organisation, Person,
Publication, Service, Product, Patent, Equipment, etc., (ii) to manage semantically
enhanced relationships between such entities, and thus, (iii) to support data
integration and exchange across data sets. CERIF has been released as an EC
Recommendation to European Member States in 2000. Here, we present the latest version
CERIF 2008.